How to write a B2B cold email that gets a response

Sending cold email is still one of the most effective ways to generate leads and fill your sales pipeline. Unfortunately, lots of people do a poor job at it.

In recent years, my inbox has been bombarded with cold emails on a regular basis. Most of them are quite awful and annoying.

Here are the reasons why they were bad:

• Too much about them – The emails talked way too much about the awesomeness of their products and features without providing any context.
• Too long – I don’t have time to read a novel in an email. Also, when it’s not well formatted, it gives me a headache just looking at the long email.
• Too pushy – My time is precious. I have a tons of things on my plate that I am dealing with. So the last thing I want to do is to jump on a call and waste 30 minutes of my life talking to a stranger.

Now, I have also received a few cold emails that piqued my interest enough to get a response from me. What did they do right? Read on to find out.

Your cold email composes of 4 important components:

• The subject line
• The introduction
• The benefits and social proof
• The Call to Action

Also, it’s important to keep these points in mind:

• Make it short and to the point
• Make it personal – Do your research and find something that you can use to connect with the recipient on a personal level. If you come across as wanting to connect and help rather than trying to sell, sell, sell, you will have a much better chance.
• Use plain text instead of HTML format – Plain text just feels more personal.

Alright, read on to learn how to write an effective cold email.

How to write a compelling subject line

In a sea of emails, your subject line must be clear and must pique the interest of the recipients in order to have a chance of it getting opened. Here are a few ideas you can test:

• A promise to solve problem X or achieve X results using a new method or technology – People are always motivated to find better ways to solve a problem or to achieve a certain result. Examples are “Defeat fraud with big data analytics”, “Increase sales by 200% using this new email prospecting tool”, “An analytic tool built for financial analysts”, etc.
• Your company + your prospect’s company (i.e. “Zendesk + Microsoft” or “Why Zendesk is perfect for Microsoft”)
• Mention of your prospect’s competitor (How Salesforce is able to double their sales revenue in a month)

Hook them with your introduction

Alright, if your subject line does its job and gets the recipients to open the email, your introduction must say something to hook them right away. You can skip the part about introducing yourself as most people don’t really care who you are.

Instead, do some research to learn more about your prospect. A good place to start is their Linkedin profile.

Read their summary, see if they share anything or comment on anything that could you give clues on what they are interested in.

You could ask a question like this:

Hey Eric,

I noticed your comments on X’s post about cloud security and what you stated caught my attention. I completely agree with you that there are lots of security issues with keeping your data on the cloud.

Provide value

The key to getting a response from a cold email is to provide value. One of the best ways to provide value is to share a report or some content that addresses the issue that is relevant to your prospect. Here’s an example:

Our team of cloud security experts just published a report that addresses this issue. The report also discusses effective solutions using AI and machine learning technology to protect sensitive data on the cloud.

Use interest CTA

According to a study done by Gong.io, using an interest CTA generate significantly higher responses than a direct CTA. What’s an interest CTA?

An interest CTA is about asking whether your prospect would be interested in learning more. Examples are:

• Would you be interested in getting the complimentary report?
• Would you be interested to see a demo?
• Would you be interested in a free trial to test drive the software?

The interest CTA is another way of asking your prospect whether they want to continue the conversations. A direct CTA (asking for a meeting), on the other hand, may come across as too pushy and aggressive.

Give them an option to opt-out

It’s important for you to be respectful and not come across as a spammer. So, give them an option to opt-out by saying something like “If you’re not the right person to discuss this issue, do let me know. I would also greatly appreciate it if you could direct me to the right person in your company that handles X.”

Follow up, Follow up

If you don’t get a response after your first try, don’t give up. Keep on trying. Send 3-4 more follow-ups, but trying testing different subject lines and introductions.